There I am on Saturday, standing in a field in Derbyshire, involved (via a Sky News satellite van) in a live discussion with a News of the World columnist about whether politicians are out of touch. I'm making the point that most politicians are not rich.

But my adversary waxes indignant at the hypocrisy of MPs on fat salaries wagging fingers at ordinary people earning half as much, and pretending to understand our lives while they drink champagne at party conferences. The worst of it is, she adds, that if we don't like their attitude we have to lump it: their jobs are secure.

I point out that she, I, the producer of the programme and, quite possibly, the entire camera crew, earn more, often considerably more, than a backbench MP does. And (at our proprietors' expense) we stay in better hotels at party conferences than MPs can afford - so who are we to talk? I add that it is us media folk who are answerable to nobody; MPs can be sacked by their constituents with no reason given, and frequently are.

Discussion over, and feeling pleased with myself, I agree to record a second short interview about Corfu, Lord Mandelson, George Osborne, oligarchs, yachts, canapés etc. Now I put on my severe face and gravely opine that what these people have got to understand is that they're free to socialise as they please but they must be open about whom they wine and dine and yacht with, lest any suspicion arise of undue influence.

Still feeling smug I return to my kitchen to read (in that morning's Times) my own column which, after the expression of similar opinions, concludes that Mr Osborne's reputation has taken a deserved knock, but should be able to recover, and that Peter Mandelson's non-disclosure was inappropriate.

All in all, a satisfactory day's work.

It is only at about 3am on Sunday that something nags me awake. I'm a friend - aren't I? - of George and Frances Osborne. Not a close friend, but I've dined with them at least as often as Mr Mandelson admits to having met Oleg Deripaska. OK, I'm not the EU Trade Commissioner or Shadow Chancellor, but I've got to believe that a Times column may sometimes matter. I'm naturally confident of seeing to it that my social life never influences my professional judgment - but isn't that exactly what Mr Osborne or Mr Mandelson would say too? Why should there be transparency for them and privacy for media commentators? How pompous, how unself-aware we are, in the modern media.

Tides in the affairs of men

Awaiting me with my Saturday Times was my Financial Times, from which we economic ignoramuses learn the following: “Alexander Temerko, former vice president of Yukos...says ‘Everything is fine when the market is growing, but this system of loans generating more loans is very dangerous when the market falls'.”

You don't say?

Have other readers besides me - non-experts who have always supposed the City pages to contain unfathomable wisdoms that might as well be written in Latin, comprehensible only to a priesthood - noticed these financial druids lately making statements of the absolutely bleeding obvious? Such as, if you lend people more than the value of the assets on which the loan is secured, you may not get your money back? In recent weeks City pages have been full of observations that the rest of us wouldn't have dared to mention 18 months ago for fear of repeating what we imagined any fool must know. Now these are solemnly pronounced as though deep new truths were unfolding.

All this emboldens me to add my three-ha'p'orth to the debate about the coming recession and how to resist it. Laugh if you like, but I think booms and busts may be economic tides drawn by unseen moons. The swirling, eddying effects of the intricate, sometimes delicate, inter-reactions of immense forces largely hidden from us may be almost impossible in practice to predict. Governments may be unwise to think that by our actions we can turn such tides. We may squander much in the attempt.

Those aluminium tariffs

Quintin Hogg (later Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone) once told to me that he was determined to avoid becoming dignified in old age. I have vowed to heed this advice. Even at 59 one feels, and must resist, the allure of being thought seemly or well-judged. So, with that in mind, may I just say that from his photographs I find this Oleg Deripaska fellow rather attractive? I don't know what it is - the full lips? The hint of brutality? - but at one glance from those cold, Slavic eyes, my aluminium tariffs would have crumbled.

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